Mono is a software platform designed to allow developers to easily create cross platform applications. It is an open source implementation of Microsoft's .Net Framework based on the ECMA standards for C# and the Common Language Runtime.

There are several components that make up Mono:C# Compiler - The C# compiler is feature complete for compiling C# 1.0 and 2.0 (ECMA), and also contains many of the C# 3.0 features.

Mono Runtime - The runtime implements the ECMA Common Language Infrastructure (CLI). The runtime provides a Just-in-Time (JIT) compiler, an Ahead-of-Time compiler (AOT), a library loader, the garbage collector, a threading system and interoperability functionality.

Ubuntu Control Center or UCC is an application inspired by the Mandriva Control Center that aims to centralize and organize in a simple and intuitive configuration of the main tools of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. UCC uses all the native applications on Ubuntu, but also makes use of third party applications as Hardinfo, Boot-up Manager, Gufw, Startup-Manager, jstest-gtk and Font-manager and the brand new VGA-switcher that uses the module vga-switchero kernel 2.6.35.

Ubuntu Control Center is an excellent application for those who want to centralize various options and settings of Ubuntu in one place, in which items are grouped according to categories, this application can be used by any user without problems.

Watch the sun rise and set all over the world on this real-time, computer-generated illustration of the earth's patterns of sunlight and darkness on your Ubuntu desktop. The clouds are updated every 3 hours with current weather satellite imagery.

And every half hour, these images are composited and mapped onto a sphere by xplanet according to the relative position of the sun. The flat maps are post-processed by ImageMagick to cut off the 15 degrees nearest the north and south poles where cloud data is unavailable.

AppArmor is an effective and easy-to-use Linux application security system. AppArmor proactively protects the operating system and applications from external or internal threats, even zero-day attacks, by enforcing good behavior and preventing even unknown application flaws from being exploited.

AppArmor security policies completely define what system resources individual applications can access, and with what privileges. A number of default policies are included with AppArmor, and using a combination of advanced static analysis and learning-based tools, AppArmor policies for even very complex applications can be deployed successfully in a matter of hours.

The majority of computer users today are used to the window buttons (minimize, maximize and close the window) on the right-hand side of the window. When Ubuntu v.10.04 was released, Canonical did a change and placed the buttons to the left-hand side instead (It's not a bug but a feature) and is still the same way in ubuntu 10.10. This tutorial will show you two different way to move them back to the right side.

Option-1:
Press Alt+F2 to bring up the Run Application dialog box, enter “gconf-editor” in the text field, and click on Run, The Configuration Editor should pop up.

A Media Access Control address or MAC address is a unique code assigned to every piece of hardware that connects to the Internet. Internet capable phones, Network Interface Cards for desktop or notebook computers, Wireless Access Cards, and even some memory cards are among the devices that are assigned MAC addresses.

When a manufacturer creates a network capable piece of hardware they will assign the MAC address which will usually begin with a code that is tied to the manufacturer. The MAC address will be unique to every device, even two devices of the same type.

eCryptfs is a kernel-native stacked cryptographic filesystem for Linux. Stacked filesystems layer on top of existing mounted filesystems that are referred to as lower filesystems. eCryptfs is a stacked filesystem that encrypts and decrypts the files as they are written to or read from the lower filesystem.

eCryptfs encrypts and decrypts individual data extents in each file using a unique randomly generated File Encryption Key (FEK). The FEK is encrypted with the File Encryption Key Encryption Key (FEKEK), and the resulting Encrypted File Encryption Key (EFEK) is stored in the header of each lower file.

GRUB 2 introduces many new changes. GRUB 2 has better portability and modularity, supports non-ASCII characters, dynamic loading of modules, real memory management, and more and is totally different from its predecessor, menu.lst doesnt even exist it is replaced by grub.cfg which have little resemblance with menu.lst

There are times when you inadvertently overwrite your Master Boot Record. The end result being that you are unable to boot into Linux. This is especially true when you are dual booting between windows and Linux OSes or installing/upgrading your windows OS

This is what you do to restore the GRUB2 boot loader when faced with the above problem. First you need a Linux distribution CD, Ubuntu Jaunty, Karmic Live CD.

Ubuntu cannot include support for MP3 or DVD video playback or recording. MP3 formats are patented, and the patent holders have not provided the necessary licenses. Ubuntu also excludes other multimedia software due to patent, copyright, or license restrictions, such as Adobe Flash Player and RealNetworks RealPlayer.

That doesn’t mean you can’t play .mp3 files in Ubuntu , it just takes a bit of work (not much).

Follow these instructions to get mp3 and other multimedia support on your Ubuntu 10.10.

Screenlets:
Screenlets are small owner-drawn applications (written in Python) that can be described as "the virtual representation of things lying/standing around on your desk". Sticky notes, clocks, rulers, ... the possibilities are endless.

sudo apt-get install screenlets

Ubuntu Tweak:
Ubuntu Tweak is a must have application for Ubuntu and LinuxMint, it is an application to config Ubuntu easier for everyone. It provides many useful desktop and system options that the default desktop environment doesn't provide.

7zip:
p7zip is the Unix port of 7-Zip, a file archiver that archives with very high compression ratios.

sudo apt-get install p7zip-full

Speed up the application launch
Preload is considered to be read-ahead daemon application as it analyzes the applications which user runs, and on the basis of this analysis it predicts which applications user can run next time and launches these applications in RAM.

sudo apt-get install preload

Now to start preload run the following command in terminal: sudo /etc/init.d/preload start

Install Ailurus
Ailurus is an application designed for making Linux easier to use. You can use it to install software and change system settings.

Downloader For X:
Downloader for X is a nice download manager that allows downloading files from Internet , pausing them and downloading them later . It also supports splitting file into number of segments so that files could be downloaded quickly.

sudo apt-get install d4x

Deluge
The Deluge application was designed to be a full-featured BitTorrent client. Deluge uses libtorrent in it's backend and PyGTK for it's user interface, and is currently usable on POSIX-compliant operating systems.

What does that mean? For one thing, VirtualBox installs on your existing Intel or AMD-based computers, whether they are running Windows, Mac, Linux or Solaris operating systems. Secondly, VirtualBox extends the capabilities of your existing computer so that VirtualBox can run multiple operating systems (inside multiple virtual machines) at the same time. So, for example, you can run Windows and Linux on your Mac, run Windows Server 2008 on your Linux server, run Linux on your Windows PC, and so on, all alongside your existing applications. You can install and run as many virtual machines as you like -- the only practical limits are disk space and memory.

Features of "Oracle VirtualBox 3.2.0":
* Avirtual SAS controller, emulating the LsiLogic SAS controller.
* Dynamic memory ‘ballooning,’ enabling 64-bit hosts to adjust the amount of memory dedicated to a VM on the fly.
* Guest Automation API.
* Large Page support for increased performance.
* Limited, experimental support for Mac OS X guests.
* Multi-monitor support in Windows guests.
* Page Fusion, a new feature that de-duplicates RAM used by similar VMs.
* RDP video acceleration.
* Snapshots can now be deleted while the VM is running.
* Support for desktop and server versions of Ubuntu “Lucid Lynx” 10.04 LTS.
* Support for Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.5.
* Support for the Unrestricted Guest Execution feature in Intel Core i5, Core i7 and Xeon 5600 Series processors.
* USB tablet/keyboard emulation.
* vCPU hot-plugging for Linux and some Windows guests.

Installing VirtualBox:
To install VirtualBox, you need to add the non free repository, add one of the following lines according to your distribution to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

Note: Ubuntu users might want to install the dkms package to ensure that the VirtualBox host kernel modules (vboxdrv, vboxnetflt and vboxnetadp) are properly updated if the linux kernel version changes during the next apt-get upgrade. The dkms package can be installed through the Synaptic Package manager or through the following command: sudo apt-get install dkms

THE AUTHOR IS NOT RESPONSIBLE BY ANY DAMAGE THAT THIS SOFTWARE MAY CAUSE, THIS TOOL WAS DEVELOPED FOR SECURITY RESEARCH PURPOSES, USE THIS BY YOUR OWN RISK. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH THIS STATEMENT, PLEASE DO NOT USE THE TOOL.

Sometimes, developer's just create some "generic" filters in order to prevent security issues, like the ones related to web technolgies such as XSS, SQLi or Directory traversals, but not all the times they take care about the obscure strings that an attacker can use to bypass many those weakest filters. With the use of DotDotPwn tool, we can confirm if a Directory traversal attack can be performed -even- if an HTTP/FTP server has already implemented any kind of filter against this attack and knowing *ALL* the available attack strings, developers can strength their web application/client-server filters.

DotDotPwn is a simple PERL tool which detects several Directory Traversal Vulnerabilities on HTTP/FTP Servers. This AttackDB version currently has 871 traversal payloads.

DotDotPwn Features:
* Detects Directory traversal vulnerabilities on remote HTTP/FTP server systems.
* DotDotPwn checks the presence of boot.ini on the vulnerable systems through Directory traversal vulnerabilities, so it is assumed that the tested systems are Windows based HTTP/FTP servers.
* Currently, the traversal database holds 871 attack payloads. Use the -update flag to perform an online fresh update.

DotDotPwn requirements:
* Perl with support of HTTP::Lite and Net::FTP modules (these can be easily downloaded from the CPAN site - http://search.cpan.org/)

Using DotDotPwn:
Untar the package using command: tar -zxvf ddpwn.tar.gz
type the following command to run the directory traversal vulnerabilities test against web server:perl ddpwn.pl -hhtp 192.168.1.2

If you have accidentally deleted files from your hard drive, don't panic! You can easily recover deleted files whether you are using a Windows PC (NTFS) or Linux OS. You can undelete files with almost guaranteed success. The most important thing is to act as soon as you realize that the files are lost.

When a file is deleted from your computer it is not really deleted. It is simply removed from the directory of files in the folder. Even though you can no longer see the file in the folder, its contents still exist 100% intact at this point.

If you're using Windows and you deleted the file using Windows Explorer, the file will have been moved to the Recycle Bin, as long as a file remains there it can easily be restored in its entirety, with no problem at all. So the first thing to do when you want to recover a deleted file is look in the Recycle Bin. If it's there, use the Restore option which will move it back to its original location.

If you emptied the bin, used Shift Delete to get rid of the file, deleted it from within an application or used some other method of removing it that bypassed the bin, then it is still almost certainly recoverable. When you empty the Recycle Bin or delete a file using another method, the file is still not really deleted. The file no longer exists as far as the operating system is concerned and the space it occupied becomes available for re-use by other files. But the disk space does not get re-used straight away so the data that the deleted file contained will stay on your hard drive for some time to come.

At this point of time you can use Linux OS to recover the deleted file from the windows OS running under NTFS partition using tool call - Ntfsundelete

Installation:
Open up the terminal and type following command: sudo apt-get install ntfsprogs

Using Ntfsundelete:
Figure out which drive (NTFS) you want to undelete the files from. Open a terminal window and enter the following command in it: sudo fdisk -lthis will give you the list of partition present in your drive

Now that you know the name Ubuntu has assigned to your hard drive, we’ll scan it to see what files we can uncover, In the terminal window, type: sudo ntfsundelete /dev/sda1
(replace the /dev/sda1 to your actual drive)

The names of files that can recovered show up in the far right column. The percentage in the third column tells us how much of that file can be recovered.

To quickly recover the PNGs, we will use the * wildcard to recover all of the files that end with .png.
Open up the terminal window, enter: sudo ntfsundelete /dev/sda1 –u –m *.png

A strong password policy is one of the most important aspects of your security posture. Many successful security breaches involve simple brute force and dictionary attacks against weak passwords. If you intend to offer any form of remote access involving your local password system, make sure you adequately address minimum password complexity requirements, maximum password lifetimes, and frequent audits of your authentication systems.

Setting Password Length:
By default, Ubuntu requires a minimum password length of 4 characters, these values are controlled in the file /etc/pam.d/common-password, which is outlined below, look for the line having "pam_unix.so" mentioned ...

Deleted or lost files can usually be recovered from failed or formatted drives and partitions, CD-ROMs and memory cards using the free software available in the Ubuntu repositories. The data is recoverable because the information is not immediately removed from the disk.

Recoverjpeg tries to identify jpeg pictures from a filesystem image. To achieve this goal, it scans the filesystem image and looks for a jpeg structure at blocks starting at 512 bytes boundaries.

Salvaged jpeg pictures are stored by default under the name imageXXXXX.jpg where XXXXX is a five digit number starting at zero. If there are more than 100,000 recovered pictures, recoverjpeg will start using six figures numbers and more as soon as needed, but the 100,000 first ones will use a five figures number. Options -f and -i can over‐ride this behavior.

Installation:
Open the terminal and type following command to install recoverjpeg: sudo apt-get install recoverjpeg

Using recoverjpeg:
Open up the terminal and move to direcotory where you want to store the recovered jpef file and give the following command: sudo recoverjpeg /dev/sda1

Recoverjpeg does not include a complete jpeg parser. You may need to use sort-pictures afterwards to identify bogus pictures. Some pictures may be corrupted but have a correct structure; in this case, the image may be garbled. There is no automated way to detect those pictures with a 100% success rate.